


The Brave Ones

by embolalia



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Set after 1x10, The Voicemail, very vague references to past abuse, you know the one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27026341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: Any of it. All of it. Whatever you can get.That’s what Will told Neal when the young man asked whether he was trying to reconstruct his incoming or outgoing voicemails. Really he just wanted one particular message, if it was still on a satellite or a server or—Will rolled his eyes at the way Neal was humoring him and said to get everything. He figured at least that way there was less chance of Neal listening to it.
Relationships: Will McAvoy/MacKenzie McHale
Comments: 13
Kudos: 26





	The Brave Ones

**Author's Note:**

> I realize I'm very late to this party, and that there are a thousand other fics about the message Will left for Mac the night of the Bin Laden broadcast, but here's my contribution!

_Any of it. All of it. Whatever you can get._

That’s what Will told Neal when the young man asked whether he was trying to reconstruct his incoming or outgoing voicemails. Really he just wanted one particular message, if it was still on a satellite or a server or—Will rolled his eyes at the way Neal was humoring him and said to get everything. He figured at least that way there was less chance of Neal listening to it.

And so Will sits, staring at the contents of the flash drive Neal left on his desk. The window on his screen reflects off the endless glass windows behind him. His apartment has become a kaleidoscope. His two fingers sliding across the touchpad continue into infinity, and there’s only her number over and over.

Finally the voicemail filenames switch to a new number, and he scrolls up to click on her earliest message.

_Hi, Will. It’s Mackenzie. I just—I just wanted to tell you—last night was perfect. Really, I mean it. Okay, that’s the message._

He can still remember where he was standing, in the kitchen of his apartment in DC, when he first heard this one. He hadn’t heard the phone ring over the racket of his coffee grinder, but the minute the alert popped up he played her message. At the end of their date the night before they’d walked all the way from Chinatown to her apartment near Dupont Circle, where he’d suddenly found himself too in awe of her to kiss her. Instead he’d tugged her hand in his and kissed the inside of her wrist, and they’d just stared at each other. Perfect. She was right, and the fact that she knew it too made his heart swell in his chest. He called her back before he turned the coffee machine on.

He listens to a few more from their first year together, but they dwindle to efficiencies: she’s on the bus on the way to his place, she’s sorry she missed him but needs to know about what to wear to his sister’s wedding, she’s running late but always for a good reason.

Will plays just one from the months that Mackenzie was cheating on him with Brian. Those he’d never deleted, had played over and over as he tried to parse some clue. He snorts at the knowledge that he was playing them while ignoring every new voicemail, all the ones where Mac was presumably trying to explain herself outright. It makes him sad for both their younger selves. This message he listened to so many times he knows it by heart:

_Billy, Billy, Billy! I just saw Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the Whole Foods, I swear to God it was her. She had just the tiniest little walnut of a bun and this pink scrunchie like something out of the eighties. I only saw the back of her head, but I’m sure it was her. Okay! Okay. I’ll be home with the eggs in five minutes._

It turns out he still can’t listen to it without smiling. When she made it to his apartment that morning, she was so excited she danced around the kitchen while he scrambled the eggs.

He randomly chooses one of the six from the day she told him, the day he threw her out. He holds his breath as he waits to hear whether it was from before that conversation—some standard morningupdate—or after.

_Why aren’t you answering your phone? I need you to pick up, dammit Will! I know I’ve hurt you, and God, I’m so sorry, but please I need you to talk to me. I love you. I love you. Call me back._

Will shudders. At the time, he’d ignored her messages because he couldn’t imagine forgiving her—and because he feared that he might learn he had the capacity to hit her. The rage that propelled him through those weeks ripped through any control he had over his words. He swore at her up and down in his therapist’s office. His hands were always fists, but he couldn’t bear to ask the man if he might get violent. Had his father had any inkling before the first blow?

Snorting at the irony, Will gets up to get a drink. He was so focused on his fists he forgot about all the other ways he could hurt her. Was hurting her. Listening to the months and years of her pain feels like an appropriate penance, but he doesn’t want to do it.

When he gets back to the table, Will scrolls back up the list. There are three voicemails from March and April 2010. The first he understands now as several months after her return to the US.

 _Hi. I know I haven’t called in a while. I’ve been getting really good at bowling. Damn good._ The file name suggests a morning hour, but Mackenzie’s slurring as if she’s drunk. _Being back in DC without you…it’s not as if I forgot I was missing you in the middle of a war zone, but walking down streets we walked together is worse. That little French place we liked in Adams Morgan is gone, but the cafe is still there. Tryst. Remember? There’s a bowling alley in Chinatown now, near the cinema, but it’s not grungy enough for real competitors. Beers are cheaper here._ After a brief silence, she adds, _Will, I’m right here. You could find me if you wanted._

Aching for how lost she sounds, Will goes straight to the next message.

_When I was a little girl, my sisters and I all took ballet classes. Shut up, don’t laugh. I broke my ankle when I was nine, and after that I got out of it, but the one thing I remember is that when you do a spin, you’re supposed to find a steady point to hold onto with your eyes, and you stare at it as hard as you can, and spin, and find it again as soon as your head whips around. Because if you don’t have a point you’ll get dizzy. The whole world will seem to spin, even if you’re the one who started it. Fuck, Will, I’m just so dizzy. Listen, I’m going to come see your talk at Northwestern tonight, and I think— This is a test, Billy. If you’re getting my messages, come find me after. And if you get this, and you think—if there’s any chance you might someday forgive me, just—hold me for a second, will you? Even if you haven’t forgiven me yet. You’re still the man I love and I could really use it, right now. Okay. Bye._

He has to move. He abandons the laptop to pace out onto his balcony and light a cigarette. She held up that pad and he read it, and she must have thought he’d recognized her. He had. Where had she been standing after, while he panicked and stuttered something about vertigo medicine? How long had she stayed, hoping he’d find her? Is this why she waited so long to tell him she was there—because she thought he might have known and lied about it?

Will takes a long drag on his cigarette, staring out at the windows into strangers’ apartments that make up every distant point. Who the fuck did he think he was, ignoring her after all that time like she might not need him to pick up? He knew enough about what she’d gone through. The nicotine should calm him, but his hands are still shaky. There are so goddamned many more files.

Back inside, he taps the next most recent message, recognizing the date. He slept through her call that morning, and when he woke and saw her name on the screen as a missed call and a voicemail, he deleted it out of old habit. Four hours later, there she stood in his newsroom.

 _Hi, Will_ , she begins. After a long pause, she says, _I was hoping we could talk before—I mean, I’ll be in the studio this afternoon. I’m assuming Charlie told you about our conversations, and I just want you to know I don’t expect anything more than for us to work together. I really think we can make something great. I can’t tell you what it means that you agreed to work with me, too, to let me share your show. In its way, that means more than a marriage proposal. Not that—alright, I’m going to stop talking now. I’ll see you later. Bye._

If he’d gotten that message… Well, he’d probably just have stormed into Charlie’s office and then his agent’s office a few hours earlier than he actually did. He’d still have greeted her with promises to fire her as soon as he could, with anger and open contempt.

A smile, of all things, seems to be twitching at his mouth. Will can remember what he was feeling that morning, but the sensation of it, the tightness of his shoulders and the heat in his throat, is just gone. He spent all those years trying to hate her, like hatred was a wall he could build around himself for protection. Somewhere along the way he’s scaled that wall. It’s out of sight behind him.

He should call her.

The thought appears in his mind, and he grins. He should call her. And he will. There are just a few things he needs to hear first.

He doesn’t know exactly when she was stabbed, so he picks a message from the fall of 2009.

_Billy, I don’t know if you watched my segment on CNN last night, but I wish you would. The village where we filmed was holding a wedding, and you won’t see much of it in the segment except for some B-roll, but these two young people were so clearly in love. I haven’t had a shower in nine days, but one of our guys secured a bottle of whiskey, and I’m going to tell you about our wedding, alright? We’ll have to have a big wedding party, curse our Catholic mothers. Before I left I wouldn’t have dithered too much about any dress, but right now I’d give anything for some ridiculous, Cinderella thing. High heels were always more your thing than mine, but I could learn to love them after combat boots. It’s hard to believe there’s still a world with baths and manicures. A tux for you, of course. Bridesmaids in shades of pink. A church ceremony, though not too long, and lots of dancing at the reception. Maybe I’d have a second dress, or a train you could detach? I want to dance with you, Billy. God, I’m so tired. I could just rest my head on your chest and listen to your heartbeat as we swayed. Okay. I should go. Good night, Billy._

He imagines another way things could have gone, lying in his bed talking to her over a sat phone connection about their wedding while she reported from Peshawar. A real wedding, a real dress. He never stopped to wonder why she wears heels so much more now than she did before. Well, he noticed her legs.

Will listens to a few more rambles from her time as an embed, tension ratcheting up with each message that isn’t the one he’s been waiting for, since that makes it more likely the next one will be. He doesn’t want to hear what he knows is coming. He’s avoided asking her about it, but he’s played out the what-ifs. The one really big what-if.

 _Billy? Billy?_ She calls for him in clear distress. Another voice picks up behind her—Jim’s?—shouting her name. _Oh, Mac!_ the younger man says, _Okay, this is going to hurt but I need to put pressure on your wound._ She screams like she’s being murdered, and then Jim yells, _Over here! We need help over here! She’s been stabbed!_ Mac keeps begging for him, now in a whisper, until the message ends. _Billy, please, I love you._ ****

The screen before him is a blur of blue and white, none of the filenames legible. Mac, his Mac, thought she was dying. There isn’t another message for two days. He scrambles for the cursor.

_I know you haven’t been listening to these, or at least I hope not at this point, but if you hear that I’ve died you’d better listen to this one. I’ve never stopped loving you, Will. Maybe it’s cruel to say that if I might be dead by the time you hear it, if it might hurt you worse than I already have. But I need you to know he meant nothing to me in the end, and you meant everything._

Will stumbles from the table to pour himself another drink and swallow it in two gulps. Why did he do this to himself? If the voicemail from the night they got Bin Laden was all Neal had been able to reconstruct, had he really thought he’d play her the message? Or did he just want to hear the certainty in his own voice, to know that for a moment he’d been brave enough to say the words? She’s so much braver than him, has been all this time, in every way a person can be brave.

When a twist in his stomach reminds him he’s not supposed to be drinking too much since the ulcer, Will slouches back into his chair at the table to prove the point. The folder of outgoing messages is far smaller, this particular message recent enough that he doesn’t even have to scroll.

_Hey, it’s me—Will. Listen, I swear I’m not saying this because I’m high. And if the answer is no then just do me a favor and don’t call me back or bring it up or anything. But I have to tell you—I mean after tonight I really want to tell you, that I’ve never stopped loving you. You were spectacular tonight. Can you believe we got Obama?_

Will snorts. Of course he was only saying any of that because he was high. He had to get stoned first, wasted out of his mind, to say a tiny fraction of what she’d long ago confessed. What she thought he walked around knowing—and ignoring—about her and her feelings.

What was he thinking when he pulled Neal aside this morning? That he’d just email her a voice message? _Say what you’re feeling_ , she begged him when they stood in his office, when she showed him the pages she still kept in her pad. For two weeks since, she’s begged him to know what the message said. It’s no less true than it was at the time, but he’s denied her over and over, even though he didn’t protest when she suggested that true love always wins.

What makes their love story the greatest in the world?

It’s not. But it can be.

Will closes the laptop and picks up his phone.

“Hi,” Mac answers, the word thrown away like she’s in the middle of doing something else. When he doesn’t answer, she says with more focus, “Will?”

In the last few hours he’s heard her say his name a thousand ways. His chest swells with tenderness.

“Will? Will, I know it’s you.”

He manages to clear his throat. “Hang up,” he says.

“What?”

“Hang up and let me call you back.”

“Have you finally lost it?” she demands, sounding more perplexed than cross.

“I got Neal to reconstruct my voicemails. From—all of them.”

Mac gives a slight gasp. “The one you left for me?” She’s been cajoling him for weeks, but her voice is low and serious now.

“And the ones you left for me,” Will says.

For a moment they sit in silence. Will stares out the window at the spangled lights beyond. Some of the people, in some of those rooms, are also in love.

“You listened to them?” Mac asks.

He can hear the way she’s cringing in the upward lilt of her voice. She’s scared he’ll hurt her again, will make all her vulnerable nights into weapons to use against her. “Hang up,” Will repeats, needing to reassure her more than he needs to breathe, “and when it rings again, don’t answer. I need to leave you a message.”

“Okay, Billy.” Her voice is low again.

He loves that when she’s most angry, most afraid, she chooses the intimacy of _Billy_ over the formality of _William._ He loves her. And fuck, how brave was she to pour her heart out all those times?

“Wait!” Will says, “don’t hang up.”

Mac laughs. “Which is it?”

“Don’t hang up,” he says. “I’ve never stopped loving you." The words slip out of him this time, so easily that neither of them will ever have to question him again. “That was the message.”


End file.
